The big news this week, in case you missed it, was from the Potsdam Institute, which released its planetary health check, and it looks like we are very close to breaching the seventh of the Nine Planetary Boundaries, which is ocean acidification. This has huge implications for all life on earth, not just sea creatures.
You can read more here: Earth may have breached seven of nine planetary boundaries, health check shows | Oceans | The Guardian
New Scientist released a report, based on 700 years of tree ring data in Europe, which sheds light on future risks for our warming planet. Read all about it here: Jet stream shifts are linked to fires, failed harvests and the plague | New Scientist
Due to extreme ocean temperatures, scientists were expressing concern about the lack of hurricane activity this season, as the high amounts of heat in the oceans indicated it should be a very bad season.
The main issue with hot oceans means a massive amount of energy would have to be released, and well, in comes Hurricane Helene. It’s certainly taken a fair bit of my attention over the last couple of days, especially as it grew from a Cat1 to Cat4 in 12 hours! The damage is terrible
Across in Africa, Nigeria has been hammered by droughts and extreme flooding, and sadly, the Food crops destroyed by floods could feed 8.5 million people for six months. Nigeria is a country already suffering so much, so this is devastating news.
In Morocco, farmers are calling the alarm on catastrophic crop failures as droughts persist.
What are countries doing to address all of this? Well in Australia, the Labour Government approved three coal mine expansions. The three projects, all in New South Wales, are expected to generate more than 1.3 billion tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions in their lifetime. Tanya Plibersek approves three coalmine expansions in move criticised as ‘the opposite of climate action’
What are businesses doing about it? So many examples I could share here, but over at Boeing, it’s forecasting Southeast Asia passenger air traffic to more than triple over the next 20 years, that’s 4,720 new airplanes. In case you don’t know, Southeast Asia doesn’t include the giants China and India, instead it’s Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, East Timor, and Vietnam. Here’s the story: Boeing: Southeast Asia air traffic to more than triple through 2043 – Aeronews Global.
Another story you might have missed, for the first time, more than half of Asia’s 4.8 billion people are part of the global consumer class, defined by the World Data Lab as those spending more than US$12 per day in purchasing power parity prices. This explosive consumer spending growth matters, A LOT and we are not paying attention to what it means for all of us. Read all about it.
Must read
The World is in Crisis – by Rachel Donald (planetcritical.com) By the way, the answer to our crisis is in this article. We are using TOO much energy, and we need to draw it down significantly. If you want to do your part for the planet, step out of the consumatron lifestyle and only buy what you need. If the 3.8 billion middle class people on our planet did this, we might have a chance. Also, don’t buy anything with the word FAST in it.
Must watch
Favorite visual this week
Friend’s content and my own
It was so wonderful to have comedian and former refugee Nico Ndlovu on Climate Courage this week with Richard Busellato. Nico is a wonderful human being and honestly, anyone in this situation deserves our compassion and support. Not to mention, we need to prepare for refugees now, because not only could any of us be in this situation, but everyone who is forced to flee for their lives deserves respect, dignity and safety.
To give you a sense of the scale we are now facing, according to the UNHCR, there were 117.3 million refugees/displaced people at the end of 2023, which constitutes a rise of 8 per cent or 8.8 million people compared to the end of 2022. There has been a continual year-on-year increase over the last 12 years, and back in 2010, we had less than 40 million refugees.
When it comes to climate refugees, who have no legal status, predictions on how many we will have vary, but it’s anywhere from 25 million to 1.2 billion expected by 2050.
Are we just going to wait for it to happen?
Or will we have the courage to face it and prepare?
Whether we become a refugee, or our country is a destination refugees seek, this is not a situation we want to find ourselves in. We must be pro-active and get ready for massive people movement, or we will see even more intense suffering, more authoritarianism, and more fear.
Demand your governments act compassionately and decisively. The world can not cope with massive human migration and know peace, especially if it does not get prepared.
Dig into the news
Plenty more to read, listen to or watch, so do click through to the reads at the image below, and a reminder, this platform (elink.io) means the articles go back weeks, so have a scan and read/watch/listen to whatever jumps out at you.
Let me know what caught your attention? Or share with me what has your attention now? There’s a lot going on, which means none of us can cover everything. Besides, it’s always great to get feedback so I know I’m delivering something of value.
Cheers
Andrea
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